Hacker News Reader

Comment by ShaneMcGowan | Hacker News Reader

At what point does one give up on this whole “global economy” thing and just move to the woods?

Once you have self-sustaining energy, water, and food source with the same cost parity as your current living situation. Extra points if you can convince a group of people to join you to create a community.

It would be even better if that community became skilled at producing a certain set of goods or services and traded them with the outside world to gain wealth and increase quality of life for its inhabitants. You could take payment in advance for the services, but in case of international currencies, it would probably be prudent to hedge that currency timing risk with FX swaps...

Back to square one.

We were getting away from the drug addicted financiers with a gambling problem, and a serious misunderstanding of the concept of risk, remember?

(That's the joke - these systems all exist for a reason, it's a silly fantasy to try to avoid them rather than just spending effort to ensure they're robust and resistant to failure)

And yet, the joke is reliant on presupposing the lack of merit to getting away from the thing being escaped from.

I'm not entirely convinced that the system as is is worth trying to prop up. At least not while preserving the status and role of the same idiots who prove so adept at reinventing and perpetuating the same risky, destabilizing shit every decade.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com